Black face to a white party

Lesiba Seshoka Correspondent
THE DA sees itself as being a party of government by 2029. To achieve this, the party will need to cross the rubicon – that is, reach out to black voters in a meaningful and non-condescending way. The question is whether “Mymoney”, as DA leader Mmusi Maimane’s surname is often pronounced by the party’s white members, and his blue machine will eventually cross the Rubicon and lead the government.

As the English adage puts it, study the past to define the future. In August 1985, then-president PW Botha, dubbed “die Groot Krokodil (the Great Crocodile)”, failed in his much-anticipated Rubicon speech to reach out to blacks, choosing instead to stick to his racist guns. He maintained his rejection of majority rule.

In 1994, the concept of a Rainbow Nation was coined to define South Africa’s diversity. The government of national unity included National Party leader FW de Klerk as one of the deputy presidents. Ever since, South Africa’s dream of bringing people of all races together has been collapsing like a house of cards. The DA prides itself on being the party with the most diverse membership, and has the slogan “one nation with one future”.

South Africa, the country that the DA dreams of ruling in 2029, is a country of two nations, one white and rich, the other black and poor.

The rich and white live in plush suburbs, the majority poor and black live in shanty towns.

The country remains the most unequal society of all. The political enterprise is largely race-based. Followers, supporters and voters of the ruling ANC are largely black. The DA as the main opposition has a largely white constituency. Of course, there are historical realities that explain all that.

The ANC is one of the liberation movements that fought white minority rule and therefore those who were marginalised and disenfranchised pledged their allegiance to it.

The DA finally became the home of the historically advantaged from its previous incarnation as the Democratic Party – and the NP after it – collapsed.

Although the NP joined the ANC, it was simply ceremonial with much of its followers remaining to become a part of the DA’s DNA.

For the lily white DA to lead South Africa, it would need the support of the black majority. From the strategic moves the DA has been making, it’s clear the party has become aware of this fact.

First, it successfully wooed Patricia de Lille in a bid to win the Coloured vote in the Western Cape to consolidate its grip on power there.

The party’s strategy seems to be paying off, because in the May general elections last year it won the Western Cape with 59,4 percent of the vote, compared with 51,46 percent in 2009 and 27 percent in 2004.

The DA seems to have mastered the marketing concept of segmentation as well. It has targeted the emerging black middle class and the black intelligentsia who, with their new-found privileged status, now live in plush suburbs.

This was a strategic move, given that, in the African culture, once someone of their own coins it, he is then referred to as umlungu in isiZulu or lekgowa in Sepedi, meaning white man. One can be referred to as umlungu omnyama, meaning a black-white man.

This is part of the reason why the party has been able to keep its electoral support in traditionally white metropolitan areas although there are an increasing number of so-called black diamonds.

The party also targeted the “born frees” at universities. This is how the DA Student Organisation came to unseat the ANC-aligned SA Students Congress at the Vaal University of Technology, the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University and recently Fort Hare.

The opposition is caught in a difficult balancing act that requires it to keep its traditional white constituency while enticing new black voters, that is to mix oil and water.

Its traditional white constituency in the main does not believe there is anything good about the black man. This was clear from Allister Sparks’s outburst at the DA’s congress in Port Elizabeth. He said that during his career in journalism he had encountered really smart politicians, including Hendrick Verwoerd, the apartheid architect. However, he didn’t mention a single smart black politician, not even the world-acclaimed Nelson Mandela.

Then take Helen Zille’s comment when she referred to black pupils from the Eastern Cape as being “refugees” in the Western Cape.

The “Barack Obama of Soweto”, as Maimane is being referred to, particularly in DA circles, was not Zille’s first choice. Zille could not find a smart darkie in DA circles that she could present to the black electorate, so she opted for Agang SA’s then-leader, Mamphela Ramphele.

Why did Zille choose Ramphele, a party outsider, over Maimane? The answer lies in the implication of Sparks’s remarks – he has yet to find a smart black politician.

A closer look at Ramphele would possibly reveal the kind of person the DA was looking for, someone who could maintain the status quo and not rock the boat.

Ramphele was an executive at the World Bank, an institution which, like the DA, believes the state should not own assets but should sell them to the private sector and focus on governance. — Sunday Independent.